In Session » Mike Pigotthttp://blogs.tennessean.com/politics
Tennessee PoliticsMon, 07 Apr 2014 14:51:50 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6Come on, Metro lobbyists. The clock’s ticking.http://blogs.tennessean.com/politics/2011/come-on-metro-lobbyists-the-clocks-ticking/
http://blogs.tennessean.com/politics/2011/come-on-metro-lobbyists-the-clocks-ticking/#commentsTue, 11 Jan 2011 17:12:25 +0000Michael Casshttp://blogs.tennessean.com/politics/?p=12994It’s a new year, which means it’s time for lobbyists to start registering their clients with Metro government again. So far, however, only two have.

The 2011 lobbyist list on Metro’s web site shows that only former Deputy Mayor Bill Phillips and Mike Pigott, a partner in McNeely, Pigott & Fox, have registered. (Pigott actually registered his representation of emissions tester Systech International before 2010 was even over.) About 50 lobbyists registered with the city at some point in 2010, including at least nine by this point in the year.

Of course, most of those early registrants were lobbying the council to approve construction of the Music City Center, which got its final vote of approval on Jan. 19, 2010.

]]>http://blogs.tennessean.com/politics/2011/come-on-metro-lobbyists-the-clocks-ticking/feed/0Rich Riebeling, Larry Brinton and the story of the thrown typewriter, Part 2http://blogs.tennessean.com/politics/2009/rich-riebeling-larry-brinton-and-the-story-of-the-thrown-typewriter-part-2/
http://blogs.tennessean.com/politics/2009/rich-riebeling-larry-brinton-and-the-story-of-the-thrown-typewriter-part-2/#commentsWed, 18 Nov 2009 19:41:02 +0000Michael Casshttp://blogs.tennessean.com/politics/?p=8095We reported in this space three months ago that Metro Finance Director Rich Riebeling, known for his quick temper, said he didn’t think he had ever thrown a salad at PR man Mike Pigott when they both worked for The Nashville Banner in the 1970s. Riebeling said he did try to throw a typewriter, however, at another Banner scribe, Larry Brinton.

But Brinton (who clearly needs to be reading this blog more regularly) emailed me last week to dispute the story:

]]>http://blogs.tennessean.com/politics/2009/rich-riebeling-larry-brinton-and-the-story-of-the-thrown-typewriter-part-2/feed/1Emails show close coordination with Mayor Dean’s office on convention center PRhttp://blogs.tennessean.com/politics/2009/close-coordination-with-mayor-deans-office-on-convention-center-pr/
http://blogs.tennessean.com/politics/2009/close-coordination-with-mayor-deans-office-on-convention-center-pr/#commentsFri, 28 Aug 2009 16:03:01 +0000Michael Casshttp://blogs.tennessean.com/politics/?p=6532Mayor Karl Dean’s top aides have said they didn’t know how much money McNeely Pigott & Fox was billing the city for, though they admit they should have been paying closer attention to the MDHA-administered contract. But email traffic shows the mayor’s lieutenants were in frequent contact with the former convention center PR firm.

The emails, obtained by The Tennessean under an open records request, show:

- Dean legislative liaison Toby Compton writing a group of convention center lobbyists on several occasions to call meetings to discuss where council members stood.

“As a group we will reconvene this coming Tuesday afternoon at 5:00 in the Mayor’s Media Room to go over the intelligence that’s been gathered,” Compton wrote to a group that included Mike Pigott on March 19. “If you don’t recall which Council members you volunteered for, e-mail me and I will shoot you the names I have from the meeting.”

Pigott has said his firm did not lobby the council, although it did advocate strongly for the proposed Music City Center. Asked to explain his presence on the email distribution list and at the meetings, Compton said Pigott (and eventually David Fox) was “there in a communication role,” gathering questions that undecided council members had and finding answers for them.

“We didn’t assign them people” to lobby, Compton said.

Pigott is registered to lobby the council on behalf of CSX Transportation, the Nashville Sounds and the Tennessee Titans. Fox is not registered to lobby for anyone.

- Fox emailing a positive blog posting on April 27 to Dean, who forwarded it to Deputy Mayor Greg Hinote and Metro Finance Director Rich Riebeling two minutes later.

- Pigott forwarding to Riebeling and Hinote, without comment, an April 15 blog post by Councilwoman Emily Evans, who had raised several questions about the mayor’s land acquisition plan.

- Fox advising Hinote and Riebeling on Sept. 12, 2008, that announcing a proposed roundabout near the convention center site too early could inflame “the Ben Cunningham crowd” (Cunningham is the founder of Tennessee Tax Revolt) because the roundabout wouldn’t be paid for with tourist taxes and fees. (Metro hopes to pay for most of it with federal highway money as part of the Korean Veterans Boulevard extension, Riebeling told me Thursday.)

- Fox sending information to Hinote and Riebeling in May 2008 about an Atlanta company that had arranged financing for a hotel in Orlando, Fla.

- A McNeely Pigott & Fox employee sending the revised version of a council presentation to several of the mayor’s top aides and other convention center advocates on April 10, three days before the presentation.

- MP&F pulling together background information for Scene and USA Today reporters last spring and running it past Lacy or copying her on it.

- Jim Hester, a senior adviser to Dean, sending the mayor’s State of Metro address to MP&F partners Fox, Katy Varney and Keith Miles at about 4 p.m. on April 22, 18 hours before the mayor gave the speech. “Making sure you guys got this,” Hester wrote.

The story goes that Riebeling, known for his short fuse, once got upset with Pigott when they were both working for The Nashville Banner in the late 1970s. Was it about a story? A woman? In any case, Riebeling supposedly got so mad that he heaved a salad at his ink-stained colleague.

I asked Riebeling about this yesterday afternoon to provide a little levity (though not brevity, as Councilman Phil Claiborne mistakenly said in the midst of a comedy of errors at a recent council meeting) after an interview about the convention center project. He laughed and acknowledged that some of his old friends swear the story is true, but he said he’s pretty sure it’s not.

He did volunteer, however, that he once tried to throw a typewriter at another Banner scribe, Larry Brinton, who went behind his back to keep working solo on a story that Riebeling thought they had decided to drop.

And, in a “strange bedfellows” moment that couldn’t have been foreseen two-and-a-half years ago, when the council first debated the English-only idea, Councilmen Eric Crafton and Mike Jameson will be among the members co-hosting the event. Both men have a lot of concerns about the PR contract and the convention center proposal in general.